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The Archive Directory
Each Vesper archive is stored in its own archive directory. The archive directory has a particular structure, with particular files and subdirectories. This page describes the contents and layout of the archive directory.
The optional Archive Settings.yaml file of the archive directory contains settings pertaining to the format of the archive. All of the settings are optional, and revert to default values if not specified in the file or if the file is absent. See the archive settings file of the Vesper Starter Archive for an example of this file, and for documentation concerning its contents.
When a Vesper archive includes the audio data of its recordings, the data are stored in recording audio files, or recording files for short. The recording files are stored in one or more recording directories in the WAV audio file format. Other archives do not include the audio data of their recordings, but rather only their metadata. Examples of the latter include older archives for which there never were recording files, only clip files extracted from ephemeral audio streams, and cloud archives from which recording files have been excluded to reduce storage costs.
When a Vesper archive includes recording files they are stored in one or more recording directories. By default, there is a single recording directory, the Recordings subdirectory of the archive directory. However, the recording files of an archive can optionally be stored in one or more different or additional recording directories. In such cases, the paths of the recording directories must be specified via the recording_directories setting of the archive settings file. For example, if an archive includes a large number of recordings stored in directories on one or more disks separate from the disk that holds the archive directory, the paths of those directories can be specified with the recording_directories setting. See the documentation for the recording_directories setting in the Vesper Starter Archive's archive settings file for details.
Some Vesper archives include the audio data of their clips in clip audio files, or clip files for short. Each clip file is a WAV file containing the audio data of one clip. When clip files are present, they are stored in the Clips subdirectory of the archive directory.
Other archives do not include clip files, but rather extract clip audio data from recording files as needed, or "on-the-fly". We recommend this option whenever recording files are available, and it is Vesper's default behavior. There are often many clips in an archive, so the presence of clip files can slow down certain operations dramatically, including archive directory size computations, archive backups, and archive copying. In our experience, on-the-fly clip extraction is fast enough that it does not slow clip processing or display significantly, even when recordings are stored on external USB drives.
When present, the clips directory should be modified only via the Vesper user interface, for example by running the Create Clip Audio Files or Delete Clip Audio Files Vesper commands. It should not be modified by any other mean, for example via a Command Prompt or Windows Explorer on Windows, or via a terminal or the Finder on macOS.
The core of a Vesper archive is the archive database. The archive database is a relational database containing several tables describing the recordings, clips, stations, devices, etc. of the archive. The archive database is stored in the file Archive Database.sqlite of the archive directory.
The Preferences.yaml file of the archive directory contains settings pertaining to the Vesper user interface, for example default preset names and default form field values. See the preferences file of the Vesper Starter Archive for an example of this file, and for documentation concerning its contents. Feel free to modify the preferences files of your archives to customize the Vesper user interface for your use.
A preset is a collection of related configuration settings. Vesper supports several different types of presets. For example, a Clip Album Settings preset specifies the appearance of a clip album, while a Clip Album Commands preset specifies key bindings that map key sequences to clip album commands, say for navigating through the pages of a clip album or classifying its clips.
The Presets subdirectory of the archive directory contains subdirectories for various preset types, with each of those subdirectories containing presets of its type. For example, the Clip Album Settings subdirectory contains Clip Album Settings presets, while the Clip Album Commands subdirectory contains Clip Album Commands presets. Each preset is stored in its own YAML file in the appropriate directory.
See the Presets directory of the Vesper Starter Archive for example presets. Feel free to modify those presets and create new ones for your own archives to customize the Vesper user interface for your use.